Beginners start in the Baltic states
Telling dozens of export stories, we notice that certain trends are emerging, typical things appear that we always pay attention to. In this publication, we point out another typicality. It lies in the fact that the export stories of a significant part of Ukrainian furniture companies originate from the Baltic states. That is, newcomers in this business for some reason often make their first export deliveries to Lithuania (most often), Latvia, Estonia (to a lesser extent). We will not go into a detailed analysis of such a pattern, we will only make one assumption: this is the European Union, where everyone wants it, and at the same time, like Ukraine, these are the former Soviet republics that we understand are accessible to us. The Blanche company, which will be discussed in this publication, also exported to the Baltic States, namely to Lithuania.
“We started solidly four years ago,” says Anastasia Davydenko (Анастасия Давыденко), head of the export and regional representative offices, “our local representative in the Lithuanian capital opened a branded showroom, thus presenting our sofa offers. But a year and a half later, it turned out that the furniture trade was still not his vocation, which was also confirmed by the sales results, so I had to change the dealer and then relocate to another showroom. Things have gone well with the current business; he is already a sales outlet in Kaunas, and plans to open a BLANCHE furniture showroom in another place.
Two years ago, furniture began to be shipped to Poland. The story of entering the Polish market is different. It is based on cooperation with a design studio that has Ukrainian roots. Realizing her projects there, she uses, in particular, BLANCHE furniture, completing with them newly constructed objects. Since our Polish representatives cooperate with a large construction company that builds HoReCa objects, we supply them with considerable volumes of our upholstered furniture. And our Polish representatives also sell them in Warsaw, also through the company’s showroom. So, the Poles have a large selection of furniture from their own manufacturers, which are many – most of all, when compared with other European countries – but not all of them can offer the interesting design, the highest quality and comfort that we offer, and this is the pride of our brand .
The third export destination is Georgia. There are our sofas in three stores of a large trading network “Comfort”. We have high hopes for the Georgian market, which turned out to be friendly to Ukrainian furniture, comfortable for us, because it shows all the best and best results in terms of sales of BLANCHE furniture. The furniture industry in Georgia is rather modest, which determines the prospects of the local furniture market for exporters. Apparently, the same explains the fact that the furniture fashion is there and (if, for example, we are talking about upholstery materials – colors, prints, textures), which we had in Europe three years ago.
He asked Anastasia, it is not advisable, having already, so to speak, a familiar place and an active dealer in Lithuania, instead of looking for sales markets in other parts of the world, to expand its presence throughout the Baltic States. Of course, there was an answer, the company does not refuse such a prospect, but still does not consider it advisable to make a special bet on the Baltic market. The Baltic market is not developed in the furniture relation, as is Central Europe; the volumes of furniture sales there are significantly behind the average European ones. Including because the population of the Baltic countries is significantly inferior to the main EU countries in its solvency. There are people there whose incomes are even lower than the average in Ukraine. Therefore, domestic manufacturers of economy-class furniture are more likely to successfully develop exports to the Baltic market. Knowing this already, “BLANCHE” supplies sofas there to a greater extent, so to speak, of more modest, compact models, although large five-module, extra-sofas also have a certain demand.
When we had a conversation with Anastasia at one of the exhibitions, she was just expecting guests from Moldova, Germany, Canada, and Estonia. And it was not difficult for us to guess where the new export routes of the company could go in the near future.

The section “Success Stories” was founded as part of a grant project with the support of the Swiss Cooperation Bureau in Ukraine, the name of the project: “Increasing the level of cooperation and trust with joint participation in international and national public procurement” – TENDER TOGETHER.